[vardump]

"Starship isn't anywhere close to the primetime. It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program."

What would be the reason to believe it's that far from being usable? How would Artemis funding have anything to do with Starship?

"It is worth remembering that early on in SpaceX's history, Musk made a dummy rocket and took it to DC to convince politicians to help allocate COTS & CRS funding to SpaceX."

Reference for this?

[areoform]

Re: Artemis & NASA

The Artemis program and other contracts fund the bulk of Starship development. NASA has poured billions into SpaceX and they're SpaceX's largest "investor" by far, except NASA doesn't take equity and treats it as "pre-funding" an eventual contract (which would also pay per launch).

Starship is (likely) to be mostly (up to 60% to 70% or so) NASA funded.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-names-companies-to-d...

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1316417597257129985

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1316421539521327109

Re: early SpaceX history.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=903

[valuearb]

Now you are just making things up. SpaceX definitely needed the COTS contract to build the Falcon 9, but NASA got a massive cut in launch costs out of it.

NASA has contributed very little to Starship development. The in orbit refueling experiment contract is tiny, as is their Artemis contract.

And Musk used a Falcon to promote SpaceX in Washington DC, what’s your point?